We analyze the visual, verbal, and material arguments present at the European Green Belt (EGB), a contemporary conservation project built from the former Iron Curtain. The EGB presents itself as a “living memorial” that fuses together former warring countries and thus makes an argument for the unity of Europe. To analyze this incredibly diverse and rhetorically significant project, we put the digital representations of the site and the discourse around the EGB into conversation with situated, rhetorical criticism performed along the EGB site itself. We analyze the EGB’s different argumentative juxtapositions regarding history and memory, nonhuman nature and technology, peace and war, memorial and tourism, and preservation and restoration. Overall, we find that the transformation of the Iron Curtain from divisive border into a European-wide, transboundary biodiversity conservation project uses transcendence as a key argumentative structure, which has implications for how we understand the human relationship with the environment, history, and memory
At the time of COVID-19 social distancing, the move from the real to a digital public life has propagated viral videos of ‘capturing’ wild animals performing unusual behaviours in typically urban habitats. From Welsh sheep using roundabouts to dolphins swimming in the Venice canals, the real from the fake becomes difficult to discern through technological advances but also in the belief in the underlying ideological environmental message it enables. In this article, I examine how these viral videos are not only being faked for the social validation of likes and retweets but have also become a tool for ecofascism: a far-right ideology that marries environmentalism with white supremacist ethnonationalism. I examine how social media is used to implicitly spread ecofascist ideas through an environmentalism fakery such as the urban Venetian dolphin that shows how humans, not COVID-19, are the virus and how these human-less vignettes are ultimately used by ecofascists to argue against immigration in order to ‘bring nature back to the natural order of things’. In conclusion, I look at what the initial implications are for communication and environmentalism and the potential these human-less lockdowns have for making convincing arguments for even the smallest of societal changes to mitigate climate change.
Editorial on the Research Topic Helping scientists to communicate well for all considered: Strategic science communication in an age of environmental and health crises As the scale and scope of environmental and health crises increase, it is essential that scientists communicate with a diversity of stakeholders and audiences (National Academies of Sciences, 2017). Inclusive science communication is exceptionally critical for engaging diverse audiences in scientific research and ensuring equitable applications of scientific research to meet societal needs (Polk and Diver, 2020).Despite the clear need for inclusive science communication, many practicing scientists have no formal public engagement training (Brownell et al., 2013) and there is no uniform, comprehensive approach for effective public engagement (Scheufele et al., 2021;Weingart et al., 2021). There is also a considerable gap between science communication practitioners and researchers (Han and Stenhouse, 2015). As a result, scientists' public engagement efforts risk being more reactive than strategic, and may result in unintended consequences (e.g., Ma and Hmielowski, 2022).This special issue includes 12 articles that examine inclusivity in science communication and public engagement. These articles explore inclusivity within the context of science communication training programs and practices and exemplify how social scientific and rhetorical approaches can be used to increase inclusivity in public engagement practice.
The memory turn in the humanities has been crucial for understanding the rhetorical work memorials and museums perform for the state. However, the postmodern development of the hybrid memorial museum remains underexamined as a unique rhetorical artifact. In this article, I combine postmodern museology with material rhetoric and multimodal argumentation to critique the particular trend of repurposing historical buildings from the commemorated moment in question into the physical memorial museum itself. Building from previous literature exploring juxtaposition as argument, I contend that repurposing ruins into memorial museums uses authenticity to create a kisceral rhetorical juxtaposition between the ruin’s former and current life as an argumentative strategy. Such work thus makes the repurposed memorial museum both a container and rhetorical object of memory. To exemplify this, I perform a rhetorical critique in situ of the Memorial Museum of the German Division of Marienborn ( Gedenkstätte Deutsche Teilung Marienborn [GDTM]): a former East German border crossing. I show how GDTM leverages its architectural authenticity through this Janus-faced juxtaposition to curate cultural memory discourses regarding German unification. In conclusion, I posit how further post-Soviet infrastructures and other repurposed memorial museums offer a critical rhetoric that in our political climes is never more needed.
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